Category: Religion

John Henry Newman and the Problem of Private Judgment

Onsi A. Kamel (First Things, October 2019):

The issue of ecclesiastical authority was trickier for me. I recognized the absurdity of a twenty-year-old presuming to adjudicate claims about the Scriptures and two thousand years of history. Newman’s arguments against private judgment therefore had a prima facie plausibility for me. In his Apologia, Newman argues that man’s rebellion against God introduced an “anarchical condition of things,” leading human thought toward “suicidal excesses.” Hence, the fittingness of a divinely established living voice infallibly proclaiming supernatural truths. In his discourse on “Faith and Private Judgment,” Newman castigates Protestants for refusing to “surrender” reason in matters religious. The implication is that reason is unreliable in matters of revelation. Faith is assent to the incontestable, self-evident truth of God’s revelation, and reasoning becomes an excuse to refuse to bend the knee.

The more I internalized ­Newman’s claims about private judgment, however, the more I descended into skepticism. I could not reliably interpret the Scriptures, history, or God’s Word preached and given in the sacraments. But if I could not do these things, if my reason was unfit in matters religious, how was I to assess Newman’s arguments for Roman Catholicism? Newman himself had once recognized this dilemma, writing in a pre-conversion letter, “We have too great a horror of the principle of private judgment to trust it in so immense a matter as that of changing from one communion to another.” Did he expect me to forfeit the faculty by which I adjudicate truth claims, because that faculty is fallible? My ­conversion would have to be rooted in my private ­judgment—but, because of Rome’s claim of infallibility, conversion would forbid me from exercising that faculty ever again on doctrinal questions.

MavPhil comment: Here is one problem. I must exercise my private judgment in order to decide whether to accept Rome's authority and thereby surrender my private judgment. But if my private judgment is trustworthy up to that point, then it will be trustworthy beyond that point in the evaluation of the pronouncements of say, Pope Francis.  It is also important to note that my private judgment is not merely private inasmuch as it is informed and tempered and corrected by a lifetime of  wide and diligent study and by the opinions of many others who have exercised their private judgments carefully and responsibly.

A second problem is that it is the private judgments  of powerful and influential intellects driven by resolute commitment  that have shaped Rome's teaching. St. Augustine is a prime example. Imagine being at a theological conference or council and squaring off with the formidable Augustinus. Whom do you think would carry the day? The magisterial teaching does not come directly from the Holy Spirit but is mediated by these intellectually powerful and willful drivers of doctrine. They were not mere conduits even if they were divinely inspired.

Finally, the infighting among traditionalist, conservative, and liberal Catholics made plain that Catholics did not gain by their magisterium a clear, living voice of divine authority. They received from the past a set of magisterial documents that had to be weighed and interpreted, often over against living prelates. The ­magisterium of prior ages only multiplied the texts one had to interpret for oneself, for living bishops, it turns out, are as bad at reading as the rest of us.

Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion

Substack latest.

One source of the appeal of ordinary language philosophy (OLP) is that it reinstates much of what was ruled out as cognitively meaningless by logical positivism (LP) but without rehabilitating the commitments of old-time metaphysics. In particular, OLP allows the reinstating of religious language. This post explains, with blogic brevity, how this works and what is wrong and what right with the resulting philosophy of religion. Since OLP can be understood only against the backdrop of LP, I begin with a brief review of LP.

Next Stop: The Catacombs

Catacomb Joe sends us to this Rod Dreher piece in the European Conservative. 

Believe it or not, the Trial of the Century just happened in a courtroom in Helsinki. The Finnish parliamentarian and physician Päivi Räsänen this week returned to the dock to face hate crimes charges for having quoted the Bible in defense of Scripture’s teaching on homosexuality.

William E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality

Vallicella, William F. (2016) "William E. Mann, GOD, MODALITY, AND MORALITY," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 33 : Iss. 3 , Article 8. DOI: 10.5840/faithphil201633368

Available here. A long and meaty review article including a discussion of divine simplicity and Mann's approach thereto.

The Ersatz Religion of ‘Wokery’: What is to be done?

The short answer is that the cure for an ersatz religion is genuine religion.

Colin Dueck in a review of Joshua Mitchell:

So, what is to be done? Mitchell’s answer in American Awakening is the observation that an essentially theological problem requires a theological solution. If the destructive ersatz religion of left-wing identity politics rests on a mistaken premise of all-encompassing group innocence versus group guilt—as it obviously does—then the answer is to recover that older spiritual awareness and humility that all human beings are flawed sinners as individuals. Here, Mitchell is in the best tradition of leading 20th-century conservative philosophers, who understood that the ideological authoritarian movements of that era could not only be stopped by political method; they also had to be confronted through a deeper understanding of their spiritual roots.  [The idea is better conveyed by replacing 'could not only be stopped by political method' with 'could not be stopped by political method only.']

Why is 'wokery' an essentially theological problem? 

Mitchell says that twenty-first century progressives believe in a kind of hierarchy of human sin and transgression based upon a series of group dichotomies: male versus female, white versus non-white, straight versus gay, Western versus non-Western, and so on. In each pairing, the latter group is the historical victim, and the former group the victimizer. Sin or guilt, like innocence, is therefore assigned by group. For oppressor groups, sin cannot be washed away, other than by apologetics ['apologies' works better here] that never end. For oppressed groups, there is no guilt or transgression in the first place, only the innocence of victimhood.

As Mitchell notes, identity politics removes the traditional religious scapegoat and finds a new one. In the older understanding, the sacrifice of the guiltless Christ—the one true innocent—is needed because all human beings are irredeemably sinful. In the newer progressive understanding, some groups are sinful, and some are not. This unleashes a new form of political activism. To be specific, it encourages a form of politics that is collectivist, utopian, and revolutionary—really an ersatz religion. We have seen their kind before. It does not end well.

As you can see, this article is of high quality. You really should read the whole of it. One quibble, though. On Christianity, human beings are not irredeemably sinful; if that were the case they could not be redeemed. The Christian idea is rather that human beings are all so deeply and originally sinful that they cannot redeem themselves by their own individual or collective effort and so need a divine Redeemer.

A Proposed Change to the Pater Noster

Substitute "Do not allow us to be led into temptation" for "Lead us not into temptation." For why on earth or in heaven would the Father of Lights want to lead us into the darkness of temptation?

………………

Vito Caiati comments:

With regard to today’s short post, “A Proposed Change to the Pater Noster. I think that you may find Aquinas’ understanding of the petition “Lead us not into temptation” worthy of your consideration. Specifically, in the “Explanation of the Lord’s Prayer” (Expositio in orationem dominicam), he writes:

But does God lead one to evil, that he should pray: "Lead us not into temptation"?

I reply that God is said to lead a person into evil by permitting him to the extent that, because of his many sins, He withdraws His grace from man, and as a result of this withdrawal man does fall into sin. Therefore, we sing in the Psalm: "When my strength shall fail, do not Thou forsake me."[23] God, however, directs man by the fervor of charity that he be not led into temptation. For charity even in its smallest degree is able to resist any kind of sin: "Many waters cannot quench charity."[24] He also guides man by the light of his intellect in which he teaches him what he should do. For as the Philosopher says: "Everyone who sins is ignorant."[25] "I will give thee understanding and I will instruct thee."[26] It was for this last that David prayed, saying: "Enlighten my eyes that I never sleep in death; lest at any time my enemy say: I have prevailed against him."[27] We have this through the gift of understanding. Therefore, when we refuse to consent to temptation, we keep our hearts pure: "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God."[28] And it follows from this petition that we are led up to the sight of God, and to it may God lead us all! (https://isidore.co/aquinas/PaterNoster.htm)

This interpretation of the text in question not only avoids the clearly undesirable implication that God would “want to lead us into the darkness of temptation” but it also logically follows from the fifth (“forgive us our trespasses”) and sixth (“deliver us from evil”) petitions, the former asking forgiveness for our sins and the latter protection against all the evils of the world, many of which flow from them. Thus, these concern the effects of past sin, ours or our ancestors, while the seventh implores God not to remove the very grace that protects us from sinning again, given our fallen state.

I thank Vito for his erudite comment and for exposing my ignorance of the fact that the doctor angelicus had addressed my puzzlement long ago.  I am having some trouble, though, making sense of Thomas' explanation. He seems to be saying the following.

Man freely sins. God freely responds by withdrawing his grace. This withdrawal of grace either causes or raises the probability that man commit further sins.  "Lead us not into temptation" is thus a request that God not withdraw or withhold the grace we need to keep from sinning.  Accordingly, God leads us into temptation when he withdraws or withholds the grace we need to keep from sinning. I am sorry but I find this a rather strained attempt at making sense of the petition, "Lead us not into temptation." 

How does it go in Greek? Not knowing Greek, I cannot say.  In any case, Christ did not speak Greek. So we cannot be sure of the sense of the words Christ used when he taught his disciples the "Our Father." 

Aquinas quotes Aristotle  in the passage above. But did The Philosopher have the word sin' or the Greek equivalent in his philosophical vocabulary?  Was there a Greek equivalent that has the same  sense as 'sin' when used by Jews and Christians? Sin is an offense against God. Can one sin against the Unmoved Mover, against Thought thinking itself (noesis noeseos)? Can one sin against any of the Greek gods, Zeus for example? I don't know.  Nescio, ergo blogo.